


Of Charred Bones

by Aradellia



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Minor Violence, Other, Pre-Canon, Starvation, oh Boy do I love hurting, tagss2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 22:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17149862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aradellia/pseuds/Aradellia
Summary: All that remains now is the gnawing hunger, and the dirty white of bone splinters. Regardless of her prayers, her gods cannot pass into the claimed territory she calls a home. Only the Devil and his demons remain here, awaiting their prey to drop dead.





	Of Charred Bones

The shallow tally marks on the headstone marked the 77th day Volta had called the abandoned, overfilled graveyard her new home, at least that was the last time she counted. Attempting to count backwards, it would be… a lot of days since she was taken from her family and village, deposited in a burned down husk of a village far, far away from home. She had been deemed useless by the raiders, and tossed aside like garbage. She sits down beside the headstone she had used to mark any semblance of time passing besides the sun, thinking back as best she could.

They left her with only the dirtied dress on her back, her leather boots, the smallest parcel of food she had even seen, and a knife. They rode off, leaving her abandoned in the smoked out tomb of her people, with no hope of escape.

She scoured the buildings for any hope, for any scrap of food or drink, of reliable shelter. She found very little, and in the end she couldn’t even call the husk-like buildings a definite home. She wrapped herself in the smoky-smelling blanket she scavenged, collected her tiny supplies, and sought out shelter.

She found the cemetery quickly, just a few minutes walk from the smoking town. On the grounds was a small building, most likely used to prepare the dead for their burials. The town’s water supply luckily flowed into it, and it was still fresh and untouched by the fires, or perhaps luckily kept it clean for her. She drank happily from it, thankful that at least one thing was secure in her exile.

There was at least a bit of shelter in the graveyard, but it was a terrifying place and she didn’t know if it were any safer then the burnt out village. She returned to the remnants of the village, and just tried to find somewhere that would guard her, at least partially, from passersby and the weather if it got rough.

Settling down in what had to be an old seamstress shop, she picked carefully at the few bits of food she had, and tried to think. Her mother had told her that keeping her mind straight in times of terror would be the way she would survive, that pushing away confusion and delirium would allow her to live through the horrors of their day-to-day.

She stretched her food out for a week. Her blanket kept her warm in the partly chilly nights. The sounds of raiders in the far off forests and towns scared her, but she held firm. During the late afternoons of the day, she foraged for anything and everything nearby. Much of the berry bushes were burned away, but there was just enough for her to get by.

On the two week mark, raiders came back. She had been getting a drink from the waters flowing through the undertaker’s building when she heard them, and smelled fire. Looking through the dusty window, she watched the raiders burn the little that remained of the village.

She was grateful she had grabbed her blanket, and that she had carried her few little berries back to her, as sour as they were. That night, she sat on the steps of the building, and watched the buildings of the village burn into piles of ash, now only left with the cemetary to call a home.

From that day on, her life spiraled into a living hell.

She had water, but food was quickly disappearing. Berries wouldn’t sustain her, and the rats that occasionally weaved through the tombstones soon became too fast for her to catch. She was terrified of taking a further step with the bodies around her, and promised herself to never go so far. She continued to try and forage and hunt anything, but soon all of her prospects dried up. She cut down heavily on her water to avoid the pains that had already begun.

Her shoes were first. Leather was far from edible, but starvation was slowly twisting her mind around in confusing and debilitating circles. Whatever could fill the void in her stomach was better then letting it grow. Raiders moved in once more, ignoring her graveyard pointedly, perhaps fearing the consequences of stirring the dead like many would. She dug into the shallowest graves, her fractured and hungry thoughts breaking her promise. She gnawed on the bones of a person buried, sucking out whatever she could out of the coarse and dirty things.

A braver band of raiders came to her home. She only had a knife to defend herself, but at this point, she was practically rags and bones. A cruel man maimed her, blinding her in her right eye. Blood was spilled, and they left her behind screaming pathetically. Now without her right eye, her knife broken, and hunger still tearing her up from the inside-out, she was left with little hope of survival.

She ripped up parts of her dress to cover her wounds. She stared into the reflection of the water at her eye, her eyelid hiding the worst of the damage to the eye. They had torn and popped her eye open, leaving it a mess of whites and her original brown irises. Time moved on, and she stopped counting the days in the graveyard. Her wounded eye soon faded from brown to a white-brown mess. What will she had to try and have her eye work left as quick as her hope for salvation.

Her memory-searching is broken with the painful growl of her stomach, still trying to get anything to fill it. The words of her mother were but muffled whispers in a storm, meaning nothing in the tempest. She stood up slowly, clutching the dress that barely hung on her shoulders. It was deep into the night, she realized.

She dug on her hands and knees until she hit her target at the foot of the headstone, pulling out a small, shattered bone from the dirt. She sucked at the ends for the marrow, and gnawed on it to get anything else. Shards of the bone stuck into her throat, but the pain barely rivaled the horrific sickness of starvation. She threw it away when there was nothing left, and didn’t bother to settle the grave. She shuffled to the door of the undertaker’s building, still standing somehow despite everything.

Resting her foggy head on the crumbling steps, and pulling her fraying blanket over her shoulders, she tried to find the will to sleep, and to wake once the sun was up again. Her eyes shut quickly, too heavy from exhaustion.

_“Such a poor, pathetic thing…”_

The words were unfamiliar, the voice deep and terrifying down to her own brittle bones. The voice came out of the darkness of her slumber, a rumble not unlike horses approaching.

_“You must be so hungry.”_

_I am_ , she whispers into nothing around her,  _I really am._

“Such a strong girl, to survive so long without real food.”

_I want to eat!_ , she finds herself sobbing, her starvation inescapable even in her own dreams (or perhaps now it was her nightmares),  _I miss eating, I miss being full, It hurts so much!_

_“What if I told you, starving girl, that I could give you that which you wish for?”_

The blackness opened up into a grey field, a grassy plain left in greyscale. Color didn’t exist here, leaving it feeling empty. It was a hollow, unsettling feeling, but not even it could best her overwhelming hunger. Before her stood a tall being, with fur and claws, and horns upon his head. Staring into the eyes of a goat-headed man, her hunger-muddled mind told her it was reality. The weak rationality she clung to spoke in terror of the being.

“Y-you could?”

Red eyes bore down on her, evaluating her pathetic, bony, and dilapidated body. Desperate for a miracle, she didn’t shield herself from the gaze of the being. They rounded her like a predator eying its dinner. She mindlessly thought that there had been vultures circling the graveyard earlier that day. In the distance of the dream, the cries of the vultures echoed, the reminder of what would become of her soon.

“...could you really do it?”

The being smiled at her, a toothy grin. He reached out and gently patted her head, smoothing down the wild and ratty strands of her hair. With the tip of a claw, he parted a more stubborn strand out of the way of her dead eye.

_“I can feed you. In return, you will do something for me.”_

It was crippling, the overwhelming feeling of happiness at the thought of eating once again. She could eat food again! She could finally feel full, and content, and not have to gnaw on bones and leather and bugs to survive any longer.

“I could eat again… what would I have to do?”

_“Help me. While you help me, I will ensure you can eat anything you desire.”_

“I would just… help you? And I could eat?”

_“Help me with some of my endeavors, and in exchange you will be fed. That is all I ask. Do we have a deal, Volta?”_

Her name on his lips didn’t scare her, though it should have if she had been in her right mind. It was perfect, the only escape she had from her hell in the graveyard. The being offered his hand to her, and she… hesitated. Claws and fur awaited her consent, her final agreement.

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of the forest around rustling. Blinking her eye quickly, she lessen the amount of sunlight crossing her face. She sat up slowly, looking to the rising sun not yet peeking completely over the trees. Her dress slumped forward, baring her chest with little care for decorum. What was once covered in muscle and a little fat was skeleton, her body eating away at her own flesh to try and keep moving. She shrugged it back up what was left of her shoulders, and watched the sun.

Her dreams lingered, and for a moment they chased the chasm of her hunger away. Her body had chased away her chance, though it felt bone-deep that it would return to her. Shadows behind her stirred and shook, the sun dispelling them from their hold on the world. She stood up quietly, slowly folding up her blanket and stowing it inside the undertaker’s building. The shadows were more pronounced in the building, the few windows only allow a little into the still air.

It had been home for her for… who knows how long now. The village was burnt to ash just as long. Her separation and isolation was in a time she had long forgotten, her happy life just as easily lost and replaced by red and anger and hunger.

The being’s offer. He could feed her, in exchange for helping him. Her muddled thoughts ignored the obvious ‘how longs’ and ‘what kind of help’ questions, focusing on what she earned and gained.

Food. Feeling full again.

Whispers chased her as she wandered during the day, aimlessly moving just to avoid her limbs from locking up. She ventured through the empty grounds of the village. She ventured into the forests, ignoring the pain in her soles as she stepped onto stones and branches, watching life move on as it should. The cry of a vulture sounded. She returned to the graveyard as the sun begun to dip back behind the trees. She dug down further into an already desecrated grave, looking for the longer bones that had to be there.

She didn’t have the strength to continue digging, her brittle and broken nails unable to dig enough to get the bones she needed. In the end, she had dug only a little further down, and was left with nothing. If she wanted bones, she would need to dig for hours… hours she didn’t have now that the sunset was upon her.

She lay herself on the grave she defiled, ignoring the chittering of the woods, and the ever approaching vultures above.

Staring into the melting sky, reds and purples and yellows spreading over the blue, Volta wondered for the first time since she was dumped there what had become of her family.

_“Are you ready?”_

Pulling herself up to sit up was painful, her skin and bones aching alongside her stomach. She looked up at the being, who offered his hand to her once again. Reality bleeds away with the sky as it splatters across the ground in grotesque fashion, burning the green of the grass into brown and black.

“Can I know your name?”

The question seemed to phase the being for a moment, before he smiled to her again. The undertaker’s building shatters soundlessly, dissolving into the empty sky.

_“The Devil. Now, Volta… will you take my deal?”_

Knelt in the dirt of another’s grave, stomach eating away at what little remained, she reaches out for the Devil’s hand. The world around her gives away to a roar of beasts, and an overwhelming red. She grasps his hand tightly, and he squeezes it back. His smile turns wicked as he lifts her to her feet.

The world turns upside down, and she’s left staring into the red-black of the Devil’s eyes. Chains fill her vision, wrapping around her gently. They encircle her, wrapping around her limbs as light as a feather. She watches them curiously, too focused on the hollow hole her stomach was. They fade once one of the chains has wrapped around her stomach, leaving her curious about what they were.

The Devil beckons her with a gentle call of her name as an apple appears in his hand. Red and shined, it was the first real piece of food she had seen in many days. She pounces for it, snatching it out of the Devil’s hands, clutching it in her own. In the grey world she ignored, the red apple was a thing of beauty.

She realized her mistake quickly, looking sheepishly up at the Devil. She had rudely taken it, ignoring the being who so graciously fed her. The Devil didn’t look mad at her, instead giving a soft huff, and patting her head.

_“I promised to feed you. Now, eat.”_

She doesn’t need anymore approval. She takes a bite of the apple, crying as she tastes the flesh of the apple, the juice dribbling down her chin.

She doesn’t notice the blood dripping out of the apple she feasted on, nor the Devil’s accomplished grin as she seals her deal for life.

_“There will be more to eat. Now… you’ll help me with a problem of mine.”_


End file.
